How to run for mayor of a Texas city

Running for mayor of a Texas city is the most visible local race you can enter — and the most demanding. Unlike a single council district, the mayor's office is citywide: you have to introduce yourself to every neighborhood, win a majority of the vote, and be ready for a June run-off if the field splits. In a place like Collin County — the #2 fastest-growing county in the country, where roughly 83% of growth is in-migration — a huge share of the voters you need to reach didn't even live in town at the last election. This guide walks you through exactly how to get on the ballot and how to run a mayoral campaign you can win.

Are you eligible to run for mayor in Texas?

Texas law and your city charter together set the baseline. In most general-law and home-rule cities, a mayoral candidate must be:

• A United States citizen;
• At least 18 years old (some city charters set a higher minimum — check yours);
• A registered voter in the city;
• A resident of Texas and of the city for the period your charter requires before the filing deadline (commonly 12 months in the state and 6–12 months in the city);
• Not finally convicted of a felony (unless rights are restored) and not declared mentally incapacitated by a court.

How do you file to run for mayor?

Getting on the ballot is a paperwork process with hard deadlines. Here's the sequence, in order:

1. 1.Appoint a campaign treasurer. File a *Campaign Treasurer Appointment* (form CTA) with your city secretary before you accept any contribution or make any expenditure. This is the legal starting gun — do it first. See our guide to the treasurer appointment.
2. 2.Get the candidate packet from the city secretary and confirm the term, the filing fee or petition signature option, and exactly which seat is up.
3. 3.File your Application for a Place on the Ballot by the deadline — roughly mid-February for a May election (the 78th day before election day). Confirm the exact date, fee, and signature count with your filing authority.
4. 4.Calendar your campaign-finance deadlines. The 30-day and 8-day pre-election Form C/OH reports are the ones candidates most often miss — and a run-off adds its own reporting deadlines.

What's the timeline — and how does the June run-off work?

Here's the part that makes a mayoral race different from a school board race: trustees win by plurality (most votes, no run-off), but mayors usually have to win a majority. If three or four credible candidates split the vote and nobody clears 50%, the top two head to a June run-off — and Frisco's own 2026 mayoral race is a real example of exactly that, advancing to a June 13 run-off. A run-off is a second, lower-turnout campaign on a compressed clock: you have to re-bank your supporters, persuade the people who backed eliminated candidates, and turn everyone out again in about six weeks.

How do you actually win a citywide mayoral race?

Because the mayor is elected citywide, you can't win by working one favorite neighborhood. You have to build a city-wide voter universe and reach it efficiently — at a scale most council candidates never face. The campaigns that win do four things well:

• Know your number. Pull turnout from the last few May city elections, estimate the votes it takes to win a majority, and build toward that target. Our how many votes to win guide shows the math.
• Build a real, citywide voter universe. Identify the households that actually vote in May municipal elections across every part of the city — then layer in the new arrivals who just moved in and aren't on any old list.
• Combine the door and the mail. Citywide is too big to knock alone. Pair high-value door-knocking with direct mail and P2P texting to cover the whole city.
• Bank the early vote, then chase. Get identified supporters to vote early, then spend Election Day chasing the ones who haven't — and keep that list warm in case of a run-off.

The hard truth for Texas mayoral candidates: the partisan vendors can't help you. NGP VAN is Democrats-only and i360 is Republicans-only — both gate voter data by party. In an officially nonpartisan mayoral race, you literally can't use them. That's the gap Mandate was built to close.

The bottom line

Running for mayor is a real, citywide campaign — and one that may go two rounds. File your treasurer appointment first, hit the mid-February deadline, build a city-wide plan to win a majority in May, and keep enough in reserve to win a June run-off if it comes. Do that, and a focused first-time candidate can win the seat. For neighbors in nearby races, see our guides to running for city council in Texas and running for office in Collin County, or explore Mandate's platform. Ready to start? Grab the free Collin County filing kit.